Raymond Chandler Quotes

If I like it, it's gonna be on my album. You can't please everyone.

I make movies that I enjoy making and tell stories that I want to see, so it’s hard. You never reverse engineer those things and go, “What would appeal to this or that?” Even if I tried, I don’t know. I’m an all-American kid.

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

Write what you think is good, is the whole of the law.

I don't care what people do. I don't care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.

First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?

Good taste doesn't exist. It is our taste. We have to be proud of it.

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.

For me, I'm not trying to be the flavor for everybody. But I'm just proud when people I respect or people that I want to be my fans are my fans.

Music is so subjective and personal, I don't expect people to like everything I do. But that's life and you have to live unapologetically.

You can't try and make something you think someone else will like. You can only make what you like. How can you make a song that Yo-Landi Visser likes? You don't know me. You'll never understand me.

I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.

The reason why I'm not a pop star is I would have hated it. I'll stick to being an artist. I'm not trying not to be commercial; I am just doing what I do. I have finely tuned tastes, and that gets prioritized above everything else. That's just how it is.

Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.

You can't write ... on the strength of influence. You can only write a good story or a good novel by yourself.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

I've always been the audience that I wanted to reach, so I write for myself.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

My style is personal, my style of writing is personal, and I believe in that. I believe what comes out of me is an individual thing, and that's why I, I believe in the individual.